


the ghost of a ghost

by Morning66



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:27:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morning66/pseuds/Morning66
Summary: Shindou is not the only one Sai’s memory still haunts long after he’s gone from this world.
Relationships: Shindou Hikaru/Touya Akira
Comments: 6
Kudos: 62





	the ghost of a ghost

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!! This is just a little thing kinda examining the mystery of Sai years later. It’s mostly gen.
> 
> Hope you like it! :)

Waya doesn’t play NetGo much anymore.

He’s old now, too old to have shame in not knowing the newest technology. He’s pretty sure his ancient PC is going on eight years this December and he doesn’t have a clue how it still runs, except possibly that it just hasn’t seen enough use yet. He has a smart phone now, one that goes online and has apps, stupid ones that Shindou showed him at lunch once, ramen stained hands clicking on his screen and leaving long, dirty smudges.

Occasionally, though, Waya wants to win a game good and well, so he turns on his old piece of metal, listening to it groan and praying it’ll start up. Maybe it’s just after he’s gotten kicked out of a league by a kid half his age, maybe it’s after he watches Touya’s greedy hands take another title because he never has left enough for the rest of them.

Whatever the reason, Waya always logs in to the old server, decrepit and outdated as it is now. There’s other sites these days, ones with a better layout that have more than just a handful of players, but still Waya goes back to the same one he always has. He signs in as Zelda, a name that really is much too young for him now.

Sometimes Waya kids himself and believes the reason he always returns is to relive his youth, back when the world was his for the taking, the future stretching out long and bright before him. Nostalgia, he’ll tell himself on those days, it’s just nostalgia.

Most days, though, he’s honest. He’s always been a realist and he sees no reason to lie now.

He comes back because of Sai, because the memories of that long ago summer still haunt him, replaying in his mind every now and again.

Every time he logs on, he looks for Sai. It’s a ritual, a tradition, one he doubts he’ll ever forget. He knows, though he’s not sure how, that Sai will never be there, not ever again.

Still he checks, looking for the ghost of a person who once was. 

* * *

The hotel bar is full of energy the night after Shindou defends the Honinbo title for the fifth time. 

Isumi’s always been a thoughtful drinker, even when he was young and especially now when he’s on the dark side of thirty. Still, many of his friend’s have never been careful with their alcohol, a fact that leads to a humorous night for him.

He’s watching Waya twirl with a girl ten years younger than him, their chest pressing tightly to each other every now and again. It makes him laugh, half because he’s known Waya since he thought girls were gross and half because he wonders what his friend’s girlfriend would think.

“Hey!” Isumi turns to see the man of the hour appearing beside him, eyes alight as always, hair still dyed, even after all these years. 

Shindou settles on the stool beside Isumi, laying his arms across the greasy bar. It’s the first time Isumi’s seen him in about an hour, after the other man wandered off with Touya, to do what he doesn’t know and probably doesn’t want to know. Arms still draped across each other, Shindou orders another drink, then turns to Isumi.

“Thank you,” he says and his eyes are uncharacteristically serious.

Isumi shakes his head, puzzled. He can’t think of anything he might have done for Shindou tonight. “For what?”

“For bringing me back after he left,” Shindou says simply, as if it’s that easy to understand. Then, eyes lighting up again, he grabs his new drink and shuffles off to the dance floor.

Isumi stares after him, wondering if the mystery of Shindou will ever end. He doubts it. He’s known him over a decade now and still there is so much left unexplained about the other man, from his meteoric rise to the pros to his strange hiatus.

Isumi flashes back to a night so many years ago, a night in which they both stood at the precipice of something. Him the start of his career, Shindou the continuation of his, the choice to start or forever quit. Isumi had long believed that there was something more behind his friend’s long absence than boredom or indecision. He’d seen Shindou’s eyes that night, devastated and heartbroken, heard the cracks in his voice. 

As he watches Shindou dance near Waya, Isumi wonders who the ‘he’ the other man just referenced was, certain that, all the same, he’ll never know.

* * *

Ochi knows he’s a good go player, a strong one. He made it to the pros when he was barely a teenager, passing with the best record. Since then, he’s had numerous wins, numerous chances to show the world his skill. It might be bad to say that, but Ochi’s never been modest, never been humble, always ready to state the truth.

Still, deep down in his bones he also knows that he’ll never be a legend, never be known generations in the future. He learned that at fourteen, after the Hokuto Cup playoffs, after he won and then lost when it really counted. It took him a few years and many minutes in the bathroom, tapping out moves along the cool tile walls, to accept it, but accept it did, even if he’ll never admit it.

At forty, he understands why Touya didn’t see him as a rival back when they were both teenagers. Sure, he’s still bitter about it, still a bit grumpy, but he understands now that Touya and Shindou were on a whole ‘nother level, then and now.

Some nights, when that fact is torturing him, when he’s lost a title match to someone, not because he’s stupid or because he made a silly mistake or misread the board, but because he just wasn’t good enough, Ochi replays a game that few know about and even fewer have seen played out in full.

It’s a game Touya offered him once as proof, sitting in his grandfather’s living room, both only teenagers.

Even now, Ochi can’t reconcile this game. How could Shindou have been that good, at that young, with that little expirerence? It’s impossible, he thinks. Shindou wouldn’t be that good for years to come.

Still, despite the grudge Ochi still holds, Touya has never been one to lie, not about something so important.

Every time Ochi looks at the game, he notices something different, a puzzle hidden underneath the moves. He studies it, long after he should give up and move on, because someday he wants to see that picture.

What lies beneath the moves?

* * *

Until the end Touya Kouyo never admits he has a rival.

“Everyone is my rival,” he has said more than once, face placid and media ready.

In some ways, it is true. He has seen enough games to know that there are strong players hiding in many places, that even weaker players can be a challenge on occasion. His rivals stretch far in front of him and far behind him, always waiting to fight on the board, black and white stones clashing.

Still, this statement isn’t always true, not really. There is one that is a rival more so than anyone else, a man who he has barely played and never seen, but still haunts him in the dark of night when he sits alone at the board.

Sai.

At some point, Touyo Kouyo realizes that he will never play Sai again, that their game will remain a solitary remarkable event in a remarkable career. He accepts it, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t regret it must be that way.

In the end, he is not his son. He does not accost Shindou about Sai’s identity, he does not desperately hunt the man behind the computer. That, however, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t wonder and wait, yearning for someone who can match him.

Eventually, though, when his time in this world fades and the light of the next one dawns, he will be able to play Sai again, face to face this time.

* * *

There are three people that fundamentally shape Akira Touya’s go. 

The first is his father, who builds a foundation brick upon brick from nothing, nurturing and stern and kind. The next is Shindou, who teaches him the passion of the game, who teaches him to fight with ferocity, who teaches him to want. The last is Sai, who he’s never seen, but still feels as if he knows him intimately.

Akira was twenty when Shindou told him the truth, in the salon where they first played, now locked up and closed,the last light of day slowly fading outside. He listened then, eyes wide and dark, and he believed, because how could he not? He had seen the impossible and he understood that the only answer could be an impossible one.

In the end, Akira is most thankful to Sai for bringing him Shindou.

Without them both, Akira would surely be a go player and a great one at that. He was always destined to succeed and win and achieve, weaned on the clicking of stones, the beautiful black and white shapes spread across the board. But would he be as content? As satisfied? Would he ever even have a chance at reaching the Hand of God? 

The answer is clear to him every time he sees his father sitting alone at a board, first move made, every time he watches Ogata drink by himself into the night, frown seared on his face. These men who raised him, they are what he might have been without Sai, without Shindou to make him something more.

When Akira walks hand in hand with Shindou at Hiroshima decades from that fateful May fifth, he thanks Sai for his lasting impact on his go and, most of all, for bringing him and Hikaru together.

In front of an old shrine, Akira watches a tear roll slowly down Hikaru’s face and his own fingers begin to turn white from lack of blood circulation. Akira likes to think Sai is watching too from somewhere above, smiling as the two of them cling to each other.

  
  



End file.
